Poussin's Promenade, Roman Campagna

Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter of the 1600s, spent most of his working life in Rome and died there in 1665. More than 150 years later the French painters working in Rome still revered him, and a stretch of the Tiber bank outside the city was known among them as Poussin's walk. Corot painted it during his first stay in Italy, between 1825 and 1828, on paper later glued to canvas. The river runs slow and flat, the earth banks are worn into ridges, a small boat sits on the water and a single thin tree stands against a pale yellow sky. Corot kept the study until his death, and the red wax seal of his studio sale is still in the lower right corner. It entered the Louvre in 1941 with the collection of Paul Jamot, a former curator of its paintings.